Why is Lanny Davis lying about you?

Vince Foster. Remember him, Lanny.
Remember how the WSJ editorial page
drove him to suicide, the place now more
than willing to run your slander on American
voters and the good people of Connecticut


According to Lieberman spokesman Lanny Davis, you people are a raging, angry crowd. He even compares you to Ann Coulter because he found some random comments. It's never a blog post, but random comments.

Liberal McCarthyism
Bigotry and hate aren't just for right-wingers anymore.

BY LANNY J. DAVIS
Tuesday, August 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

WASHINGTON--My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.
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Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. Here are just a few examples (there are many, many more anyone with a search engine can find) of the type of thing the liberal blog sites have been posting about Joe Lieberman:

• "Ned Lamont and his supporters need to [g]et real busy. Ned needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an AMerican who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby" (by "rim," posted on Huffington Post, July 6, 2006).

• "Joe's on the Senate floor now and he's growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate" (by "ctkeith," posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005).

• On "Lieberman vs. Murtha": "as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on" (by "tomjones," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

• "Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse? Leiberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. Hell, his wife's name is Haggadah or Muffeletta or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover" (by "gerrylong," posted on the Huffington Post, July 8, 2006).

• "Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot" (by "greenskeeper," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

And these are some of the nicer examples.

One Sunday morning on C-Span I debated Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel on the Lieberman versus Lamont race. Afterwards I received a series of emails--many of them in ALL CAPS (which often suggests the hyper-frenetic state of these extremist haters)--that were of the same stripe as the blog posts, and filled with the same level of personal hate.

But the issue is not just emotional outbursts by these usually anonymous bloggers. A friend of mine just returned from Connecticut, where he had spoken on several occasions on behalf of Joe Lieberman. He happens to be a liberal antiwar Democrat, just as I am. He is also a lawyer. He told me that within a day of a Lamont event--where he asked the candidate some critical questions--some of his clients were blitzed with emails attacking him and threatening boycotts of their products if they did not drop him as their attorney. He has actually decided not to return to Connecticut for the primary today; he is fearful for his physical safety.

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Moreover, the support he gets from these haters should not be attributed to Mr. Lamont--nor should he be blamed for their extremism, bigotry and intolerance. But he ought to denounce them. He hasn't as yet.

Mr. Lamont and all other liberal Democrats should remember the McCarthy era and not fall into the trap of the hypocrisy of the double standard--that it's not OK when Ann Coulter dispenses her venomous hatred, but it is OK when our side's versions of Ann Coulter

Lanny Davis should be ashmed of himself. Running to the people who drove his friend to blow his brains out. Remember how Bob Bartley smugly went on TV to wash his hands of the whole affair. Now, to save your friend Joe Lieberman, you run to their warm embrace, skipping over the puddles of blood of your late friend, well darkened spots after all this time.

Funny how Ned Lamont is expected to denounce random comments on blogs which even the bloggers can't control,but Sen. Lieberman is allowwed to gain the support of people like Coulter, Hannity and Imus. Ah yes, Imus, who used to call black employees nigger while at WNBC, witnessed by Howard Stern and Robin Quivers. No one denounces that dried up old racist. Anyone denounce Fox News? Sen. Lieberman liked going on there until he realized Democratic voters didn't like Fox News.

Lanny, comments posted to a blog are not the same as blogging any more than writing a letter to the editor is the same as publishing a newspaper. Most bloggers do not agree with all the comments posted on their site. But as long as it isn't trolling, or libel, it usually stays up.

So now race bating and intimidation are now "tough questions"? Funny, Sen. Lieberman has no problem with Al Sharpton until he campaigned for Ned Lamont. Which is why many people were outraged that Richard Goodstein, a lobbyist from Boston, who disrupted one campaign appearance and then tried to get black kids beat up at another by egging on the Lamont staff is now facing a backlash in his professional life.? I cry bitter tears for him. The man is hardly tiny, what I think he feared was the loss of his lobbying clients.



Lanny, what you don't tell people is that no blogger organized that or directed that. Our highly responsive audience did that on their own. We found out who he is and who he worked for and made that info public. No one said call his clients. People, voters, did that on their own. The same with your harsh e-mails. We don't tell people to do these things, they're just tired of Democratic regulars more willing to make nice with Republicans and trash other Democrats in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

What you don't get is that it isn't "bloggers" but ordinary voters who are doing this, the people who are tired of being peed on and being told it's rain. We reflect them, not the other way around. There is great discontent with Senator Lieberman and while you pick a few examples, a minority of a minority opinion, you have ignored the real discontent and have sought to blame "bloggers" by which you mean Democratic voters.